FABLE OF CUPID. 59 



first entities are active, and that so the first substances also, 

 cold and heat; that these nevertheless exist incorporeally, 

 but that there is subjoined to them a passive and poten 

 tial matter, which has a corporeal magnitude, and is equally 

 susceptive of either nature, itself at the same time void of 

 all action : that light is the budding forth of heat, but of 

 heat scattered, which, being multiplied by coition, is made 

 firm and sensible; that darkness is, in like manner, the 

 destitution and commingling of nature radiating from cold ; 

 that rarity and density are the textures, and, as it were, 

 the webs of heat and cold ; but that heat and cold produce 

 and manufacture them, as it were, cold by condensing and 

 thickening the work, heat by widening and extending it : 

 that from such kind of textures is put into bodies a dispo 

 sition of their parts toward motion, either suitable to motion 

 or somewhat averse to it, in the thinner bodies prompt and 

 naturally fitted to motion, in the denser inclining to torpor 

 and averse to it : that heat therefore excites and effects 

 motion through a rarified space, and that cold represses 

 and stops motion through a dense space : wherefore say 

 they there are four coessential natures and conjoined, and 

 those twofold, preserving that order mutually which I have 

 mentioned (for heat and cold are the sources, the others are 

 emanations), yet that, nevertheless, they are ever concomi 

 tant and inseparable : that those four natures are heat, 

 light, rarity, and motion : that again, there are four opposed 

 to these ; cold, darkness, denseness, and immobility : that 

 the seats and regions of the first conjugation is in the hea 

 ven, the stars, and especially in the sun ; for that the heaven 

 from its surpassing and pure heat, and from its matter 

 mostly extended, is the hottest, most clear, and most rare, 

 and highly inclined to motion ; that the earth, on the other 

 hand, owing to its pure and unbroken cold, and from its 

 matter being mostly contracted, was the most cold, dark, 

 and dense, utterly motionless, and altogether unsuited by 

 nature to motion ; but that the heights of heaven preserve 

 their nature entire and unhurt, admitting some diversity 

 among themselves, but altogether removed from the vio 

 lence and attack of a contrary : that there is the same con 

 sistency through the lower parts of the earth, that only the 

 extreme parts where there is a nearness and meeting of the 

 contraries is uneasy, and suffers opposition from the mutual 

 quarter; that so the heaven is in its whole mass and sub 

 stance full of heat, and entirely free from every contrary 

 nature, but unequally, being in some parts more, in others 



